Built in 1928, the Fox wasn’t just a theater. It was an event. One of five Fox Theatres built across the country by film pioneer William Fox, Detroit’s version is the largest and arguably the most spectacular. It was the first theater in the world designed specifically for talking pictures, opening the same year “The Jazz Singer” stunned audiences with synchronized sound. From the start, it was future-minded. And yet, the place feels ancient—like something unearthed from the ruins of an empire that had better taste.
You don’t walk into the Fox. You arrive.
The doors give way to a six-story lobby carved from myth. Burmese, Siamese, Indian, and Persian influences swirl into a riot of gold leaf, marble, and red velvet. Elephant heads support the balcony. Massive columns climb toward a ceiling that glows like a celestial temple. It doesn’t look like it was designed—it looks like it was summoned.
This was no accident. The 1920s were roaring. Detroit was booming with autos and ambition. Theaters weren’t just places to watch a film—they were cathedrals to a new gospel: American entertainment. At its peak, the Fox seated over 5,000 people, all watching the same story flicker to life on a single silver screen. Movies. Stage shows. Vaudeville. Newsreels. It was where Detroit came to see and be seen.
But like the city around it, the Fox faded. The postwar years brought suburban flight, declining attendance, and disrepair. By the 1970s, the theater had slipped into a strange twilight—still open, but far from golden. A palace with peeling walls and ghosts in the balcony.
And then came Mike and Marian Ilitch.
In 1987, the Ilitches—already the owners of Little Caesars and the Red Wings—bought the building and launched a $12 million restoration. They didn’t just save it. They resurrected it. The chandeliers were cleaned. The gold leaf was restored. The carpets rewoven. By 1988, the Fox reopened in all its impossible glory.
Since then, it has hosted everyone from Frank Sinatra to Prince, Aretha Franklin to Diana Ross, Sesame Street Live to Broadway tours. It’s a performance hall, yes. But also a kind of civic soul. An act of faith cast in plaster and velvet.
Walk in today, and you still feel it—the hush that settles when the house lights dim, the swell of the orchestra, the laughter that rises in tiers. Even the air smells like magic and memory.
And outside, the Fox marquee glows like a promise on Woodward Avenue, just a few steps from Comerica Park, from the Fillmore, from the Ilitches’ District Detroit empire. It anchors the corner like a jeweled sentinel, watching the city fall, rise, and reimagine itself.